Punycorn
I don't recall my exact age, somewhere around 12, that I was pursuing a personal obsession at my local public library. Nothing salacious, unless you count learning the rules of backgammon as a subject of Freudian analysis, which it likely is. For some reason, probably connected with chess or early home computer games, I was seized by the need to learn the rules of various card and boardgames.
It was there that I happened upon a an odd-looking hardback called Fantasy Role-Playing Games by J. Eric Holmes. I immediately caught the DnD bug. I was already susceptible having caught the Star Wars strain aged 7 and my immunity was further weakened by a teacher reading aloud from The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in the soft corner of class not so long after.
I soon had my Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide. I read Appendix N and Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature. I was knee-deep in fantasy trilogies, Piers Anthony and Terry Brooks. I read with appetite and, so I thought at the time, discernment. To be fair to teen me, I did read The Sword of Shannara and think, wait a minute, haven't I read this before? Yep. It was The Lord of the Rings.
On a family camping holiday I refused to leave the tent and read the Silmarillion, thus compounding the misery of an already grim vacation. New subjects of obsession were birthed from the old. Metallica made music about Cthulhu (with some changes for copyright reasons) and Anthrax had a song about Judge Dread. They didn't grok it was satire and neither did I. Judge Dredd wasn't just an RPG, it was a comic book drawn by Brian Bolland and Mike McMahon.
By the time I celebrated finishing my A-levels with a holiday in Spain, my copy of Magician wasn't holding my attention as much as the bathers on the beach. Fantasy had guided me through the the best of times and the worst of times. The hero's journey was taking me on a new path. A world of kitchen sink realism, utterly free of all forms of sexism, where might didn't make right.
Yes, comic books.
Fantasy is in my AD&D, I mean my DNA. My young mind was moulded, or warped, by reading Alan Garner and T.H. White as a mite. Fritz Leiber as an older mite. Kelly Link and Maureen F. McHugh as an old fart.
Heroes and villains and fantasy maps still circulate in my blood stream. Back then I liked my fantasy high, and serious. No jokes with my spells. Now I enjoy the jokes. Teenage me would not approve of Punycorn. Luckily it's for middle-grade readers (8-12) and you don't need to be a seventh level Gnome Illusionist to enjoy it.
Carbuncle is a land of endless rainbows and sugar-sprinkled doughnuts—until the vile Sir Ogre unleashes his evil army on the happy kingdom. Who can stop his outsized appetite for destruction? Punycorn! Who? Punycorn. The smallest, clumsiest, and, yes, puniest of all the unicorns. Punycorn may not look like a hero, but aided by a fireless dragon, a feisty dung beetle, and a magic sword with a hidden secret, he might just be Carbuncle’s only hope!
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Out November 14th from HarperCollins
Blackwells/ WHSmith/ B&N/ BAM!/ Bookshop.org/ Hudson/ Target/ Walmart/ Amazon/ AmazonUK
Publisher : Clarion Books (November 14, 2023)
Language : English
Hardcover : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 0358571995
ISBN-13 : 978-0358571995
Reading age : 8 - 12 years
Grade level : 3 - 7
Item Weight : 1 pounds
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Is that ringing in your ears the result of too many thrash metal gigs spent standing by the speakers? Or is it Distressed Beeping you hear? The cure is available from me and from Page 45. 108 pages, 120gsm uncoated paper. Matt laminated cover.
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